We all went to the Hendrix campus this afternoon so I could practice taking pictures. It was such a beautiful day! I got some cute ones of David and Anna. I don’t know if they’re what the instructor had in mind, but hey, they’re the most important subjects to me! I realized later I was so concerned about framing that I didn’t pay enough attention to lighting. Maybe next time.
It’s time for an update on Sasha. She had the third of her four cancer treatments today, and so far she’s doing really well. It’s not a shot; rather, it’s administered with some device that uses a burst of air to shoot the medicine through her skin. There aren’t any side effects, but the second one somehow burst a capillary in her leg and caused it to be very sore (she didn’t even want to walk on it), but a steroid shot took care of that. The vet says her lymph nodes are still down, which is very good. Sasha is only the fourth dog at the clinic (and I think in the state) to have this treatment, and she is by far the case that was caught the earliest, so they are very optimistic and excited for her to be receiving this treatment. Here she is with Dr. Sonya Lavergne at Hillcrest Animal Hospital:
Get well, Sasha!
Today is one of those happy “anniversary” days. One year ago today, we went to the OB and saw Anna for the first time on the ultrasound. She was this tiny little peanut-looking thing, with a tiny little light pulsing in the middle—her beating heart! And so this baby became more than a blue line on a pregnancy test; we knew for sure that there really was a baby in there, we spread the news to our friends and family, and the adventure began.
Unfortunately, what should have been a joyful day was derailed by another event—we had to take our sweet Sasha to a specialist veterinarian in Little Rock because she has cancer. We found out yesterday that a growth which was removed from her tongue last week, and thought to be benign, was actually a malignant melanoma. Up until just a few short years ago, malignant melanoma in dogs was almost certainly a death sentence. But now, caught early enough, it responds remarkably well to a new type of vaccine. The doctor thinks that Sasha’s cancer was caught very early; she didn’t feel any enlargement in the lymph nodes, and her chest x-ray was clean. So she thinks Sasha is a perfect candidate for this treatment. We are going ahead with it, but it takes a few months to work, so we have to endure a bit of anxious waiting before we know if she’s going to be ok. Fortunately, unlike chemo, this treatment has no side effects. Sasha’s a tough little dog; she’s gotten through a lot already, and I hope she’ll get through this too.
Next July 31, I want to celebrate both of their lives.
I know you’ve all been on the edge of your seats about this, so just to inform you, I’m sleeping better. I was a little worried—I was beginning to think I had a real insomnia problem that might require professional help. But for about four or five nights now I’ve been able to fall asleep within a few minutes and have gotten several hours through the night. David, however, didn’t get much last night—Anna was fine, but Sasha kept him up during the thunderstorms.
Happy Birthday…
… to Sasha! We adopted her 3 years ago today. It seems like it’s been longer; I can’t remember what it was like before she came along. And I must take this opportunity to say: If you’re going to get a dog, please adopt one. That’s all. I won’t go into a full speech right now, or it wouldn’t be a “snippet.”
Sunday Morning Breakfast
I’ve figured it out—scrambled eggs and chai. The scrambled eggs keep me from starving during church, and the chai keeps me from falling asleep. Glad I finally got that worked out.
An Unpleasant Surprise
My mom brought over my baby book for me to look at, and I left it on the kitchen counter. Some time later, David asked me, “What’s with the creepy baby book?” “Creepy baby book?” I asked. “Yeah.” “My baby book is creepy?” “Yeah.” Then I figured out what had happened. He was flipping through it, apparently never having heard of the tradition of saving a lock of baby hair from one’s first haircut.
Sleeping Through the Night
Anna is. I’m not. After three months of fighting sleep, making myself wake up even when I’m very sleepy, and only sleeping for a few hours at a time, now I have to learn how to sleep through the night. I hope that happens soon. I’ve started working a Sudoku when I get into bed to clear my mind of everything else and focus on one mind-numbing thing.
I’m 38 1/2 weeks pregnant, and I can still give the dog a bath. I consider that quite a feat.
I had a hard time coming up with some of my quirks, but Sasha’s come to mind easily. Probably no one else cares about this, but it’s still fun to write.
1. She doesn’t like trailers, or more specifically, any vehicle pulling something along behind it, whether it’s a boat, U-Haul, flatbed trailer, whatever. She goes nuts barking at it.
2. She’s scared of things that beep, like digital thermometers, watches, and other electronic things. Even if it’s a very quiet, not-at-all-annoying beep, it still freaks her out and she starts pacing and trembling and wants to jump on the furniture. I would give anything to know what she’s thinking. (I tried to “desensitize” her to beeps once by beeping something as I was offering her a treat. All I did was make her afraid of treats for a few days. She kept shying away from them. Dog biscuits can be so unpredictable, you know.)
3. She doesn’t like the camera. (This is a shame because she’s so cute! It’s hard to get a good picture of her.) When we get the camera out, she tries to hide from it, and she sometimes even has the same jumping-on-the-furniture reaction that she has to beeps and thunder. She can even tell when we’re using our cell phones as cameras. We can talk on our cell phones with no reaction whatsoever from her, but if we try to take a picture with them, she knows.
4. Most dogs roll in stuff. Thanfully, Sasha doesn’t like to roll in gross things; she prefers fragrances and household chemicals. When we’ve just put on something scented, like my perfume or David’s aftershave, she wants to roll on us. When I spray air freshener, or spray Endust on a cloth and a little residue gets on the floor, she goes crazy rolling around all over the carpet. You should see her with Febreeze.
5. Every time I play the piano, she gets her toys out of her basket and starts playing with them. Every time. She really doesn’t play much on her own, I’d say just a couple of minutes a day, and that’s usually when David comes home. But somehow the piano triggers something in her mind that tells her she’s supposed to play with her toys.
6. She doesn’t like it when we sneeze, particularly David. If she’s lying near him, she gets up and moves away. If she’s somewhere else in the house, she gets up and goes to him. She just has to move somehow, and she seems somewhat annoyed that we’ve disturbed her and made her get up.
I’m always on the lookout for baby girl clothes with dogs on them. There’s so much cute boy stuff with dogs, but very little for girls (it’s all cats—ugh!). Anyway, I found this cute Scottie sweater at Kohl’s on clearance for $2.80! It’s 6-9 mo. size, so I hope Anna can wear it next fall.
I was up from 3 A.M. to 6 A.M. night before last with Sasha. That’s right, our dog. She’s scared of thunder, and for some reason her solution for this is to jump on our bed. (She’s not allowed on the furniture, and she’s very good not to get up there unless she’s scared.) I would almost give in and just let her just stay up there (against my better judgment) so we could get some sleep. But she doesn’t want to sleep with us. She wants to pace around and tromp all over us and roll around on our heads. How she thinks this is going to help the thunder situation, I don’t know. So anyway, one of us gets up with her so at least the other one can get some sleep. Since David has to go to work, I have Sasha duty on weeknights.
Let’s see—I finished a load of laundry, thawed some chicken and got it marinating for dinner, drank a cup of hot cider, and caught up on my internet goofing-around. I went back to bed when David got up to get ready for work, and I slept until 9:30.
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